Sighthound Video App for remote connection

[sighthoundian]

Hello
I have enabled my Sighthound remote access and I have port forwarded my port on my router used in Sighthound. There are 3 IP addresses shown below:
Local address: http://127.0.0.1:8848
Internal address: http://192.168.0.xxx:8848
External address:
http://67.193.xxx.xx:8848
On the iOS APP when I am at home I sign in with the Internal IP address as I understand that this won't use any of my ISP bandwidth, just WiFi. But when I am away from home I have to logout and sign in with the external IP address. Is there somewhere in the APP to input the 2 IP addresses and it will automatically use the local one when home and the External one when away from the home network? I know that I could just leave the login IP as the External address but does that means when I am at home I am using data from my ISP because I am connecting to an external IP address? Can someone please clarify. Thanks. ian

[ryan]

Hi Ian,

When you are in your house using the external IP should not use any of your ISP bandwidth assuming that your phone is also connected to your home's network and is smart enough to use that rather than the cellular connection. Your router will know what its external address is, intercept any internal requests for that, and route locally as expected. It shouldn't be sending any such requests nor payloads externally, as it both would have nowhere to send them (it is the target itself) and they'd just bounce right back even if they did.

I suppose there is always a chance that your phone uses the wrong data connection, or that your networking equipment is doing something truly odd, but I can't think of a scenario offhand that would cause queries on the local network using the external address to be routed outside of your network.

Best,
- ryan

[sighthoundian]

Thanks for the reply Ryan. Yes my iPhone uses the home Wi-Fi when I am home and it is not the cellular data. On my iPhone I have the Sighthound video App sign in as the External IP address so when I am away from home it can connect. So what you are saying is that I should leave it on the External IP as the sign in and when I am home the router will read the External IP as routing to the Internal IP and thus it will only use the router WiFi and not the ISP bandwidth? I tried to use the External IP and unplug the Internet to the WiFi router and it doesn't work it still needs to connect externally (i.e. use the internet). But I can use the internal IP and it will connect without the the internet cable plugged into the router. So I guess it must be using some bandwidth but not sure how much.
Ian

[ryan]

Hi Ian,

Yup. Consider the following:

Sighthound Video computer [internal IP] ------- router [external IP] ------- Internet

Your router is assigning the internal IP to the Sighthound Video computer. When someone on the internal network asks for the external IP, if your router supports NAT Loopback (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_a ... T_loopback) which it must if you're able to use the external IP internally, the router will detect that request and just point it toward the destination according to the requested port assuming such a mapping exists.

When you unplug your router from the internet it no longer has its external IP as that is assigned by your ISP, which is why you aren't able to connect to that IP anymore.

Again, just to cover all bases, I suppose it is possible some unexpected edge case may exist as I noted before. Perhaps monitor your bandwidth usage with your respective ISP just in case, but I can't really imagine what that would be.

Best,
- ryan

[sighthoundian]

Thanks Ryan for that excellent explanation.
Cheers!
Ian